Paper Abstracts

PACH, Alfred (Union Theological Seminary) Transformations in Drug Research and Applied Anthropology: Trailblazing with Mike Agar. Mike Agar enriched approaches to applied anthropology and expanded its critical relevance through incorporating history, epidemiology, economics, and ethnography in his evolving approach to research on drug use. Over time his studies engaged wider and more complex intersections of personal, social and political contexts. His work embodies the best of the ‘sociological imagination’ in showing the links between individual personal lives and their troubles, and the wider society and history in which they live. I employ Mike’s valuable concepts of ‘ethno-epidemiology’ and ‘person-in-context’ to consider variations and changes in drug use contexts, patterns and meanings across space and time.pach3r@aol.com(TH-125)

PAERREGAARD, Karsten (U Gothenburg) Communicating the Inevitable: The Challenge of Preparing for Climate Change Adaptation in the Peruvian Andes. Peru is one of the most climate change vulnerable countries in the world. Due to rising temperatures and the glacier melt its rural population faces water shortage and environmental degradation. Yet, rather than locating the cause of global warming in the developed world they point at their own changing lifestyle and when asked how to prepare for the future they suggest climate change mitigation rather than adaptation. This paper discusses the challenge external organizations face when communicating the hard facts of climate change to Peruvian rural communities and helping them to adjust to environmental change and create sustainable development. karsten.paerregaard@globalstudies.gu.se(TH-122)

PACKAGE-WARD, Christina (NOAA Fisheries). Partnering to Conduct Fisheries Management through an Interdisciplinary Plan Team: Everyday Experiences Working as an Anthropologist in a Mostly Biologists’ World. This paper includes a description of everyday experiences working as an anthropologist in fisheries management on a multi-disciplinary team comprised primarily of biologists or those with a biology background, but also including data specialists, lawyers, regulation writers, economists, and anthropologists. Challenges such as being the sole anthropologist on a team and primarily working with other disciplines, being heard by others and hearing them, attempting to learn while doing, trying to be an expert on many different fisheries covering a wide geographic expanse, and searching for possible social impacts to actions that seem primarily biological are explored. (W-31)

PAFF, Stephen (Independent) Computerized Knowledge Production: Machine Learning Models as Social Actors. Machine learning is a computer-based means of knowledge production, generating insights beyond the scope of their creation. Machine learning models interact with human users: humans inputting information, tweaking features, and the model advising actions. How do machine learning algorithms function as a means and object of communication between institutions and individuals? Following Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, this review paper explores the transformation of machine learning models into social actors, facilitating interactions between policy-makers, programmers, and implementers. Further, it connects interdisciplinary perspectives to understand computerized knowledge production and discuss the moral implications of transparency and accountability to subjects in this process.paff.stephen@gmail.com(TH-12)

PAGE, J. Bryan (U Miami) New Drug Policy and Why We Must Sustain It. Recent shifts in perceptions of some drugs in Western pharmacopoeia have led to changes in policy at state levels in various parts of the United States Cannabis in particular has received attention in these changes. Examination of these changes’ potential public health benefits and risks requires the best possible scientific information and the most acute possible awareness of racial and ethnic prejudice in formation of prior attitudes and their attendant policies. Suggestions for sustainable policy formation should emerge from these considerations, especially in the interest of forming humane solutions to potential problems. bryan.page@miami.edu(W-99)

PALMER, Andie (U Alberta) Terra Nullius Or Commons?: Undermining of Maori Rights and Title under New Zealand’s Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act. New Zealand government legislation enacted in 2011 designated a “common marine and coastal area,” and also specified that filing of claims of exclusive rights to such areas by Maori customary users was to be closed off by April 2017. The NZ government additionally claims rights over oil, gold, uranium and silver found in these areas through this legislation. The government creation of ‘customary marine title,’ is examined for its potential effects on Maori claims, as new efforts in courts and tribunals reassert Maori interests in the face of proposed offshore mining and increasingly degraded shellfishing areas. andie.palmer@ualberta.ca(W-62)

PAOLISSO, Michael and MILLER HESED, Christine (UMD) Anthropology, Collaboration and Climate Change. Coastal communities worldwide face challenging futures due to a changing climate. Anthropologists can engage with these communities by bringing collaborative research and learning approaches to coastal stakeholders seeking to build adaptive capacity and resilience. We present results from more than five years of research and engagement with the Deal Island Peninsula Project on the Chesapeake Bay. Specifically, we discuss how our public anthropology and collaboration efforts have affected 1) stakeholder cultural environmental knowledge and consensus, and 2) the development of networks in which local communities engage with policymakers in the development and implementation of adaptation strategies.mpaoliss@umd.edu(W-107)

PARKER, Caroline, HIRSCH, Jennifer, SHELTON, Rachel, and PHILBIN,Morgan (Columbia U) Power, Process, and Particularity: Contributions of Anthropology to Dissemination and Implementation Science. This paper examines power, process, and particularity as contributions that the discipline of anthropology can make to advance dissemination and implementation (D&I) science. We discuss the extended case method to highlight how anthropological perspectives on power can inform D&I research. We propose institutional ethnography as a tool to illuminate implementation processes and to unpack complex organizational factors that have implications for intervention effectiveness. We apply insights from medical anthropology to examine tensions between anthropology’s focus on particularity and implementation science’s interest in generalizability. Recommendations are made to guide application of anthropological insights to specific public health problems. cmp2197@cumc.columbia.edu(W-100)

PAUL-WARD, Amy (FIU) Seeking Sustainability: Using an Anthropological Lens to Reflect on How We Prepare Rehabilitation Specialists for Interprofessional Practice. These are unusual times; ongoing debates regarding healthcare access and treatment efficacy are forcing educators in health programs to re-think how we prepare students for practice. Regardless of discipline, we must critically reflect on what skills future practitioners need and how to best develop for sustainable futures in an uncertain multicultural, interprofessional healthcare environment? In this presentation, the speaker, a medical anthropologist in an interdisciplinary health college, draws on her unique perspective as both an insider and outsider to explore the following: how are we training rehabilitation specialists to be interdisciplinary professionals and can we be doing it better?paulward@fiu.edu(F-21)

PAYKEL, Jacquelyn, HATHAWAY, Wendy, and CHAVEZ, Margeaux (VA) Resident THRIVE: Promoting Resiliency and Well-Being among Medical Learners. Burnout among physicians has been documented to begin during medical training, persisting and manifesting as a deficit in well-being well into one’s professional career. This paper will describe the implementation and outcomes from the University of South Florida Internal Medicine Resident Transforming Health and Resiliency through Integration of Values-Based Experiences (THRIVE) Wellness Series that was initiated to improve resident resiliency, and to actively address the local and national concerns of increasing depression, anxiety, and suicide amongst our medical learners, staff, and faculty. The THRIVE model can be expanded to other training facilities to promote the sustainable futures of medical providers.jacquelyn.paykel@va.gov(F-124)

PAZ LEMUS, L. Tatiana (Vanderbilt U), CEBALLOS, María De Los Ángeles, GUTIERREZ, Adriana, LÓPEZ, Ana Laura, PEREIRA, Sofia, SIERRA, Lucía, MORALES, Claudia, and DE LEÓN,Dania (UVG) An Ethnographic Approach to Multidimensional Poverty in a Peri-Urban Area of Sacatepéquez, Guatemala: Employment and Living Conditions. In Guatemalan peri-urban areas, people’s choices and their possible outcomes are restrained by a framework of inequality and exclusion. Beyond poor access to public services, poverty is experienced as a multidimensional phenomenon that limits social mobility and general well-being. Using ethnographic methods, this paper explores narratives of endured deprivations and people’s efforts to improve their lives and escape poverty. This paper (part 2) draws on qualitative data about employment and living conditions gathered by a team of ethnographers for the impact evaluation of an education-focused NGO in Sacatepéquez, Guatemala.lt.paz.lemus@vanderbilt.edu(F-17)

PEÑA, E. Fernando (UVG) License to Carry: Ethnography on the Guns Subculture in Guatemala. After 36 years of civil war, Guatemala is still one of the most violent countries in Latin America; in 2016, the average violent deaths rate was 27 per 100,000 inhabitants. For a country that has used violence as a mechanism of conflict resolution, the use of handguns is portrayed as another expression of violence. Therefore, this study explores the motivations of handgun license users to obtain the license and to purchase a gun through in-depth interviews with license owners. This research also explores perceptions of masculinity, self-protection and sports.edgarfer.pena@gmail.com(F-17)

PENDYGRAFT, John and HOYT, Kaleigh (USF) Rose and Marge. Marjorie Sherwin, 75, and Rose Walton, 80, of Treasure Island, FL have been together for 40 years. In 1990, they came out in Time magazine as “The Lesbians Next Door.” In this video, they describe what that experience of coming out meant for them as a couple, each of them individually, and as a historic moment for their community. Rose also discusses her life growing up in West Virginia and her experiences as a teacher in Florida in the 1950s during widespread firing of gay teachers in one of the most seldom known acts of LGBT discrimination in Florida’s history. pendsptphoto@gmail.com(W-136)

PEREGRINE, Peter (Lawrence U) Culture as a Complex Adaptive System. In several publications my colleagues and I have demonstrated that the much-maligned categorization of cultures into band, chiefdoms, and states may have basis in empirical reality. Specifically we have found that 1) cultural evolution tends to occur through punctuated events followed by long periods of stability; 2) that the socio-political features of those periods of stability are remarkably similar across cultures; and 3) that those periods of stability can be modeled as an emergent property of a complex adaptive system. Here I argue that the underlying mechanism through which these stable states occur is resilience to natural hazards. peter.n.peregrine@lawrence.edu(F-102)

PESANTES, Maria Amalia (U Peruana Cayetano Heredia) Living with Chronic Conditions in Rural Areas of Peru. Unlike what many people think, chronic conditions are slowly penetrating the everyday lives of people in rural areas. Yes, it mostly affects the elderly and incidence rates are still low. Yet, those few affected by diabetes or hypertension face big challenges to receive care in the primary health care facilities near their communities. Unfortunately the health system of countries like Peru who have recently become a “middle income country” is still oriented towards infectious diseases. In this paper I describe the strategies of rural people affected by chronic conditions in Peru.maria.amalia.pesantes@gmail.com(TH-70)

PETERNEL, Lana (Inst for Soc Rsch-Zagreb) Sustainability and Future Orientations in the Traditional Economy: Stonemasonry in (Post)transitional Croatian Context. This paper seeks to contribute to the anthropological analysis of sustainability as a future-oriented concept through a close examination of the dominant cultural values related to the traditional economy of the stonemasonry in Croatia. Discussing sustainability I will show a transformation of stonemasonry practices facing challenges in changing (post)transitional political and economic context. Persistent structural conditions that enable the creation of new jobs, and provide an open discussion about the public needs and capabilities create a fertile soil for the development of a moral economy that enables different policies and the justified redistribution of societal and environmental resources.lanapeternel@idi.hr(S-43)

PETERSON, James (GWU) Moving Toward Ethnographic Community Engagement. Gaining access to urban communities to conduct social and behavioral research has proven formidable. Complex dynamics ensue when making entrée and relationships with relevant communities can prove elusive. From Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to more contemporary Community Engaged Research (CEnR), successful research-community partnerships to advance knowledge is work in progress. As a student of Mike Agar, I employ the concept of an Ethnographic Community Engagement. This presentation uses HIV research in DC as an example of Ethnography as a tool to assist with facilitating this process. This ongoing work explores Ethnography as concept for planning investigator-community partnerships for HIV research. (TH-125)

PETILLO, April (Kansas State U) Rendered Silent: Shrouding the Intersections of Race, Sexuality and Gender Based Violence. If gender-based violence is broadly the real and insinuated control of bodies disguised as intimacy, legacy, culture or some combination, why is it also synonymous with cisgender women’s experience? The roles appear set and though they are not inherent, they define accepted scholarship and interventions. Searching for sex positive, pro-sex worker responses to coerced prostitution sensitive to ethnicity and political realities, this paper explores where scholars inadvertently silence and erase those “beyond” the assigned role of victim, perpetrator, sex worker and/or criminal. This autoethnography interrogates academic erasure/denial at the chasm between emic and etic approaches to gender-based violence. apetillo@ksu.edu(F-99)

PETRAKOVITZ, Sonya (CWRU) Sustaining an Ancestral Medicine: Anthropological and Bioethical Arguments for Exclusivity and Identity on Rapa Nui. In the context of the most remote island in the world with a native population, tourism industry commodification and identity politics frame the exclusive use of ancestral medicine on Rapa Nui, Chile. While other traditional cultural practices, such as dance, are commodified into a tourism narrative, the ancestral medicine has remained out of the globetrotting marketplace. Continuing research presented at last year’s SfAA Conference in Santa Fe with the support of the Gil Kushner Memorial Award, pilot study data examines anthropological and bioethical sustainability questions for exclusive Rapa Nui use of their ancestral medicine, cultural persistence, and manufacturing of identity.smp152@case.edu(F-11)

withdrawn PETRIELLO, Michael (TAMU) “So, You Want Pictures of Animals, Right?”: Using Photo-Elicitation to Understand Campesino Hunting Culture in Nicaragua. The “illicit” nature of illegal hunting poses challenges to engaging hunters for conservation. Issues of (mis)trust, (il)legality, and (perceived) intentions can erode community acceptability and willingness to participate. Anthropologists are uniquely situated to address these concerns, particularly among marginalized groups like Latin American campesinos. Over eleven months, I conducted eleven photo-elicitation interviews to understand the cultural significance and meanings of hunting in a Nicaraguan campesino community. Content analysis revealed seven themes about the social importance of illegal hunting in their community. These results demonstrate how visual anthropology provides a window for conservation into the cultures behind “illicit” natural resource uses.miktope@gmail.com(W-50)

withdrawn PFALZGRAF, Foley (U Oxford) Deconstructing Resilience in Vanuatu: Exploring Disconnects in Theory and Practice and the Potential for Integrating Traditional Knowledge. Resilience, as adopted by NGOs, the United Nations, and governments across the world, has become the end goal of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) programming. However, resilience, as often taken from the Resilience Thinking perspective, struggles to incorporate a nuanced understanding of the social construction of vulnerability and the role of non-western knowledge in disaster preparation and response. This paper utilizes Vanuatu as a case study to analyze the intersection of resilience and traditional knowledge in light of the nation’s high vulnerability and recent recovery after Tropical Cyclone Pam in 2015. (F-155)

PFEIFFER, Elizabeth (RIC) Becoming Subjects: The Agency of Young Women Engaged in a Longitudinal Research Study of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States. Young African American women living in poverty are especially vulnerable to STDs. From a biomedical perspective, the bodies within this population create an ideal laboratory to study risk factors associated with STDs among adolescent women. There are fewer studies of how young women themselves express the experiences of their bodies as research subjects. Contributing to that gap, this paper draws on interviews with 30 young women about their participation in a longitudinal study of STDs across adolescence. These narratives reveal the creative agency women use as research participants, to navigate their lives, relationships, and the kind of care they desired while their bodies occupy marginalized and liminal spaces in the United States.epfeiffer@ric.edu(W-127)

PHAM, Lena (Hendrix Coll) The Significance of Toy Store Organization for Gendered Toy Selection. The organization of toy stores can signal what toys are gender appropriate and influence the freedom children have in picking their own toys. Toy stores become a place of negotiation between the interests of children and adults and culturally prescribed notions of femininity and masculinity. I examine the organization of toy stores in the United States and Sweden to determine how different toy store configurations affect gendered toy selection. Understanding the significance of toy store organization can shed light on how the environment influences the gendered choices made by children and adults. PhamLT@hendrix.edu(F-74)

PIED, Claudine (UW-Platteville) Poverty and the Politics of Small Town Entrepreneurial Economic Development. As poverty and unemployment rates rose in the United States following the economic crisis, austerity measures threatened social programs for the most vulnerable populations. At the same time, concerned investors and business owners responded to the crisis by encouraging businesses to put long-term solutions to environmental destruction and economic decline above short-term profit. This article explores the class implications of social and environmental entrepreneurialism as a small town economic development tool. Ethnographic research in the northeastern United States revealed that, despite intentions to the contrary, entrepreneurial economic development reinforced class difference by promoting sustainability without directly addressing poverty.piedc@uwplatt.edu(F-133)

PIOVESAN, Kathleen (U Oregon) Is There a Future for Working Class Urban Neighbourhoods? Neoliberal welfare state disinvestment and downloading has left many working class and poor urban neighbourhoods with fewer income and social supports. In Vancouver, Canada, government is experimenting with inclusionary zoning, combining for-profit real estate development with non-profit housing. Non-profit housing providers see opportunity in this policy arena where they are engaging in the logic of the market to mix condominium and social housing development on existing land assets and charging market rents on some units to subsidize others. Gentrification occurs through efforts to provide some right of tenure to poor residents, threatening the sustainability of working class neighbourhoods.piovesan@uoregon.edu(F-14)

PIZARRO, Cynthia (U Buenos Aires) Can the Migrants Speak?: Cultural Critique and Engaged Anthropology in Argentina. I will focus on my studies about the experiences of Bolivians and Paraguayans who come and go from peasant/indigenous societies in their countries of birth to rural areas in Argentina in order to have what they call a better life, and of those who have settled down. Migration studies usually uncritically categorize them as “(labor) migrants” and classify them by “nationality” and “migratory status.” But these categories do not homogeneously comprise the experiences of “Paraguayan” or “Bolivian” “(labor) migrants.” Moreover, this kind of understanding reproduces popular stereotypes which are biased by methodological nationalism and by economic and legal reductionism. I will argue that social scientists and practitioners must deconstruct such common beliefs in order to produce critical knowledge and to support subaltern strategies of resistance. (W-79)

PLOURD, Kenneth (CCSU) The Gullah Basket Weavers Survived Captivity: But Can They Sustain Against Developers and Pollution? This ethnographic study examines basket weavers in Gullah communities in the Sea Islands and how they have sustained. These descendants of African captives, whose ancestries are traced back to Sierra Leone, Gambia and other West African cultures, managed to preserve much of their culture until the mid-twentieth century. Interviews and participation observation indicate that tourism and new development negatively impact Gullah cultures sweet grass basket artists. Pollution and development are major factors in the disappearing of the natural habitat of sweet grass. The findings highlight how the Gullah use their agency to maintain their tradition, but is it sufficient? plourd@my.ccsu.edu(TH-137)

POLLARI, Lynette and THOMPSON, Stephen (ASU) Cultural Zoning, a Path to Healthy Tribal Neighborhoods. Navajo culture continues to endure negative health impacts of inappropriate housing and neighborhood form. Aging colonial subdivisions replete with Anglo houses blight the landscape, while recent planning efforts by the Navajo Housing Authority (2011) and Navajo Community Development Division (2013) highlight the urgency for corrective planning and housing that will respond to needs of the extended Navajo family. Excluded is a much needed focus on relevant cultural zoning practices and a clear template for grassroots, community-based planning. This practice-based and academically driven planning research proposes “cultural zoning” as an answer for Indigenous neighborhood zoning practices that will fill both gaps. lpollari2015@gmail.com(F-133)

POLLINI, Jacques (McGill U) Managing Trade-Offs: Reconciling Agriculture, Pastoralism and Conservation in the Loita Hills and Nguruman Escarpment, East Africa. Pastoral landscapes in East Africa have suffered from a history of land grabbing due to settler colonialism, agri-business expansion, and the gazetting of protected areas. As a result, Maasai communities have limited access to grazing lands, and their pastoral economy is collapsing. This has triggered diversification strategies, including the adoption of agriculture, which leads to deforestation in the highlands and the creation of fences that reduce wildlife and livestock mobility. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2016/2017 in South-West Kenya and North-West Tanzania (Nguruman escarment and Loita Hills), I describe the triple challenge of reconciling livestock husbandry, agricultural development, and conservation.jacques.pollini@gmail.com(F-62)

POLLNAC, Richard (URI) and SEARA, Tarsila (U New Haven) Aspects of the Coastal Small-Scale Fishery and Well-Being in Puerto Rico. As availability of coastal resources changes due to overfishing, pollution, climate change and management, it is important to understand relationships between the existing fishery and the wellbeing of coastal fishers to anticipate impacts related to these factors. The presentation examines relationships between demographic characteristics, attributes of fishing types and perceptions of individual wellbeing among a sample 212 small-scale coastal fishers from communities located around the coast and offshore islands of Puerto Rico. Findings indicate clear differences between fishing types and impacts on wellbeing, some of which are explored by comparative analysis of similar data from Jamaica and Belize.pollnacrb@gmail.com(TH-01)

POSEGA, Jessica (Syracuse U) Producing Subjects and Remaking Researchers: The Role of Reflexive Methodology in Navigating Fieldwork. This paper explores the influences fieldwork, specifically feminist, critical, medical anthropology grounded in life history methodology has on the subjects of fieldwork and the ethnographer. Conducting research on reproductive rights activists in Ireland and Northern Ireland has led to shifting identities for activists and myself. Many activists share personal and professional interests with my research topically, methodologically, and historically. In-depth life history elicitation creates a space for making and remaking of self, other, activist, and researcher. In keeping lived experience, reflexivity, and critical analysis as foci I engage with the interconnectedness of academic legitimacy, social change, and knowledge production. jmposega@syr.edu(W-50)

POWERS, John (UN-Omaha) Bigfoot and Environmental Sustainability?: A Virtual Ethnography. After porn, UFO and paranormal topics are the second most downloaded material on the internet. Significant virtual communities have coalesced to research and hypothesize about these phenomena. Frequently, scientific discourse is used elevate the legitimacy of an individual’s investigations. This paper will evaluate one of the indirect consequences of this movement: introducing and exposing the virtual universe to ecological concepts, including sustainability. This virtual ethnography will include content analysis of cryptozoological and UFO-related website forums to document the presence of scientific discourse and an analysis of the accuracy of the materials presented. jcpowers@unomaha.edu(W-02)